Teeny Tot School–Week 1

- Abby is 12 months old -

Now that Abby is officially one year old, I thought it was time to start some light Tot School with her.  I didn’t start until Adam was over 2 years old so everything I’m doing with her is new for me (well, the pre-planning of it all, I did a lot of these things with Adam just in the course of our day). 

Because we were only home Monday-Wednesday of this week, and because I was sick for two of those days, I only did one activity with her over two days.  But, I wanted to record some of her milestones/achievements as a newly one year old, so I figured I’d write up an official post.

At 12 months old Abby…..

Walks 100% of the time and has learned how to stand up in the middle of the floor without assistance.

She is getting faster and faster and can turn around and head in the opposite direction without missing a beat.

She says: Dada, Bruh-buh (brother), Ba Ba (bottle and baby), Buh (book, bear/any stuffed animal), Ba (bath) and a bunch of other B-sounding things.  Basically, the B sound is her consonant of choice.  She makes a ti-ti sound for cat/kitty and a sound that I can’t describe for Jesus.  It’s not a B sound but it doesn’t sound like Jesus yet.  I guess it kind of sounds like her kitty sound!  And sometimes she will say Mama.

She signs: milk, more, eat, all done, change (for diaper change), hat, dog, bath and stinky (Adam made up the sign as a baby so we taught it to Abby…it’s just waving your hand in front of your nose) and I am working hard on Dad, Mom, cat, and sleep.  She signed Mom once and has signed sleep a couple of times in the past few days.

The one activity we did was playing with bells.

She put them out and in,

Dumped the bowl,

  
Shook them,

And got lots of help from her brother.

“Wanna taste Brother?”

The next day I added in another bowl for her to transfer the bells to and from.

Hat

Dumping and working on balance!
And of course there was a lot of tasting.
She could fit the entire bell in her mouth and then when I would tell her “no no” she would pop it out which made Adam laugh hysterically.

So that was our first official week of Tot School, even though it was only 2 days!  It is SO hard finding the time to have with her without Adam butting in.  No matter what I have him doing, he wants to be with us.  Any suggestions??

Visit 1+1+1=1 for great ideas that you can do with your kids!

Tot School–Valentine’s Day Theme

- Adam is 38 months old -

We had a fun week full of hearts and love!
We read a bunch of books from the library and from our own bookshelf.  I’ve decided that for us, the most important part of our Tot School time is reading.  I want to make it more of a priority.

Anyway, here’s what we did!

Before the week started, I found my Tot School idea list like this:That is the first time that Adam has purposefully “written” something.  I love his cute scribbles!

I had wanted to do this song several times, but we only did it once.  He liked it though!  It’s the B-I-N-G-O song only you spell out H-E-A-R-T.  I can’t remember where I found the song though.

A favorite activity was this Alphabet Hearts file folder game from File Folder Fun.  He has done this “game” twice this week and that’s only because I wouldn’t let him do it more when we had so many other things we could do!  I was very surprised that he knew 22 out of 26 lowercase letters.  The only ones he missed were b, d, l, and q.  Thank you LeapFrog Letter Factory!  I didn’t teach him any of that directly!

Also from File Folder Fun were these Achy Breaky Heart puzzles.
He only made it through 4 of these before losing interest.
From Making Learning Fun we did the following:

Conversation Heart Count Cards
He LOVED these!  We did them 3 times this week.
It was a great fine motor activity clipping the mini clips on the correct numbered square.

Do-a-Dot H is for Hearts page

Heart Mosaic Page
He put a conversation heart on each red circle

From 1+1+1=1’s Love Tot Pack we did:

Hearts in Shapes matching puzzles

Lovebug Matching game
We took turn drawing cards and finding the match

I turned the blank hearts into numbered hearts and Adam counted out conversation hearts to match the number

Other Activates:

Transferring heart shaped ice cubes with tongs

He then made himself some ice water…mostly just ice. :)

On another day, he used tongs to transfer pom-poms

One of Adam’s Valentine gifts from us was a Moon Dough set.
He loves it, however I don’t!  It is so messy!!

We did a bunch of art projects:

Stamping with V-day stamps

Valentine’s Day Collage

Cookie Cutter Stamping
(idea from Totally Tots)
This started out as cookie cutter stamping but quickly turned into painting with a paintbrush….then fingers….

and then hands.
Right about now I was thinking his painting was turning out really cute….

and then he smeared it all….oh well, Daddy still loved his Valentine!

Car Track Painting
(idea from Monkeyin’ Around)

Finally, for Family Home Evening we talked about loving our family members and then we made a Love Tree (idea from Ramblings of a Crazy Woman)

And sugar cookie for dessert!

Whew!  When I write it out it feels like we did a TON of stuff!
We’re headed off on a short vacation with my family while Nat (my hubby) is out of town on business so we won’t be doing any Tot School next week, although I’m taking a bunch of file folder games and activities to keep Adam occupied.

Visit 1+1+1=1 for more blogs participating in Tot School!

Abby’s 1-Year Old Portraits

I took Abby and Adam to FotoFly for her 1-year old portraits and it was great!  Unfortunately, Abby wasn’t cooperating.  Big surprise.  She has yet to have a great photo session.  Even so, we got some cute “pensive” and “somber” pictures of her.

And then we got some great sad faces.  Even though she’s crying….we think they’re cute!

I got her happy again by giving her a book….which is quite fitting since she’s a little bookworm!

 

Adam will smile for just about anybody!

We thought this was cute….he’s trying to fix her flower.

What I love about FotoFly is that they give you the CD with full rights so I can print what I want, when I want but still have all my images to save.  Let’s face it, with her newborn pictures, our family pictures in September, and these….I have no where to hang them all but I LOVE having them to look at!